


The Wreckage of Stars

by meanwhiletimely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Azkaban, Bellamort, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Implied Sexual Assault, Interrogation, Post-Azkaban, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 16:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14597274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanwhiletimely/pseuds/meanwhiletimely
Summary: To love a Dark Lord is to spiral toward inevitable combustion, and Bellatrix has always been willing to burn.





	The Wreckage of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this as a thought experiment a couple years ago and recently found it in my old files—I think I didn't post it at the time because I wasn't happy with it and planned to revise; that isn't going to happen now so here it is as written. Ha.

The wreckage of stars — I built a world from this wreckage.  
_— Nietzsche_

* * *

**MINISTRY OF MAGIC — 1981**

CLASSIFIED: Department of Magical Law Enforcement Interrogation Transcript

Prisoner #759 — Bellatrix Black Lestrange  
Interrogator — Bartemius Crouch Sr., Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement

_[Prisoner sits contained in warded chains. Crouch stands with three armed guards behind him.]_

CROUCH: Not since Ludo Bagman has such a _celebrity_ sat in that chair. The Black heiress who became He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's most ruthless killer... Quite the story. Quite the shock.

PRISONER: They call you ruthless, too, Crouch. Why is that, I wonder?

CROUCH: You had your trial. Your sentence has been passed.

PRISONER: Yet here I am.

CROUCH: Yes. Here you are. Here where your family's influence — such as it is, these days — can no longer protect you, any more than it protected your cousin. I believe you'll be seeing him soon.

_[Prisoner smirks at that but says nothing. Crouch steps forward.]_

CROUCH: But handing _you_ straight off to the Dementors — without bleeding you for information? Without bleeding you at all? No. No, I'm afraid you're not that lucky.

_[Crouch raises his wand.]_

CROUCH: Legilimens!

_[Prisoner's smirk expands into a smile as Crouch's face contorts with effort. After several seconds, he steps back, lowering his wand.]_

CROUCH: So Occlumency is among your many... talents.

PRISONER: The Dark Lord taught me well. Would you like to see what else he taught me?

CROUCH: What I would like to see, Madam Lestrange, is you sobbing broken at my feet, begging me for mercy the way that Frank and Alice Longbottom begged you for days.

PRISONER: They didn't sob, Crouch. They screamed.

CROUCH: Then screaming, too, can be arranged.

* * *

**GRIMMAULD PLACE — 1974**

Her wedding dress is black — costly, enchanted black satin for the costly, enchanting Black bride. It shimmers with sparkling constellations when she moves, which is often, slicing a scorching path across the ballroom like a glittering falling star.

And if the air is barbed and vicious — if cool Slytherin smiles mask venomous dark secrets, if hordes of giants and Inferi terrorize the world outside, if there should be a second Black brother and a third Black sister woven web-like through that tapestry — _well._ There's no need to speak of death and disownment now, not when the eldest children of two Pure and ancient houses stand entwined beneath a shower of stars.

"Bonded for life," says the officiate, and _branded for life_ , says the snake and skull insignia Marked red as blood beneath their sleeves.

She was still Bellatrix Black when the Dark Lord made her His — when He called her and Rodolphus to Him and bestowed His blessing before at last bestowing His Mark. _You are marrying the cause_ , He had told her, and she had swallowed the three fatal words in her throat.

She is Bellatrix Lestrange now, and the Dark Lord's wedding gift sits safe in the Lestranges' shared, spellbound vault at His command, secure within the heap of goblin jewels that is her dowry: a small golden cup that burned hot as coal against her fingertips, that seemed to hum and murmur at her touch. _Treasure this as if it is a part of me_ , He had told her, with a long, incendiary look that sent a sharp tinge of pleasure shooting up her spine.

She is Bellatrix Lestrange, and she has done what Pureblood princesses must do — to say nothing of what they should _not_.

And when the last guest has left, when the house elves have swept away the carnage to leave the ballroom gleaming, when there's a new name connected to _Gamma Orionis_ on the tapestry — bride and bridegroom face each other, then the fireplace, and depart in a whirl of flame.

Like the rest of the Lestrange estate, their bed chamber is ancient and austere. As Bella eyes the immense oak bed, Rodolphus encircles warm hands around her waist, leaning close to murmur her name — her new, full name.

She has him pinned beneath her, prone and supine on the bed, before he can speak another word or spell. They meet eyes — grinning — as Bellatrix leans in, drags sharpened nails beneath his shirt, across his chest, reveling in her ability to touch him as she pleases. "You're mine, if I am yours."

 _"If,"_ repeats Rodolphus, pulling her closer for a rough, arresting kiss — and when Bella feels the burn, she gasps into his mouth.

Twisting away and leaping to her feet, she seizes her searing forearm, drags the sleeve up, sees the snake go blistering black. Turning bright, shining eyes on Rodolphus, she's struck with a violent lurch of understanding.

His own Mark has not burned.

"He's called me," she manages, skin on fire. "Only me." She looks at him — her Hogwarts paramour, her dueling partner, her symmetrically savage new husband — and feels something between them break. If Rodolphus feels it, too, he does not show it: his handsome, aristocratic features have gone entirely blank and cold. They have both known for quite some time now how to wear more than one kind of mask.

"Then go," he's saying curtly, standing and turning away. He says something else, something lower, but Bella cannot hear it: she is already whirling, gone.

_To the Dark Lord._

When she arrives with the resounding crack of Apparition, her eyes adjust quickly to the dark. She is in the center of a windowless stone chamber, alight with flickering torches — familiar and frightening at once. She has bled in this chamber, and bled others; has been molded from flame into steel.

"Madam Lestrange." The Dark Lord's mocking voice shivers sibilant across her skin. He is behind her, stepping closer: the scent of snakes and ashes sweeping forward as He moves. "Do you recognize the setting?"

"I do, my Lord." The site of their long ago lessons — or maybe not so long ago at all.

He is deathly close now, leaning her into Him, ignoring the trembling gasp escaping her lips as His hand tightens around her still-stinging left arm — lifting her wedding ring up to the torchlight. "And do you know why I've called you here, Bella? Here, on the night of your wedding?"

She is flush against Him — can feel His cool breath ghosting along her cheek, can feel the low hum of _power_ pulsing just beneath His skin. Shaking in His grip, she does not trust herself to move or speak, not when cold lips graze along the pulse point of her throat. _No,_ she answers silently — shivering, quivering. _No, Master._

 _Ah, but Bella... Blazing, brutal, beautiful Bella..._ She feels, rather than sees, His scythe-like smile. _I think you do._

The room spins and lurches forward, bone colliding with stone. He's hit her with a staggering blow of wandless magic, trapping her immobile against the wall with a single wordless incantation before advancing forward. His bloodshot eyes are glowing, gleaming, seeming to burn like coals. It occurs to Bellatrix that perhaps she should feel afraid.

"Perhaps," He agrees, conversationally. "Or perhaps..." He unsheathes His wand. "...there is more to feel than fear."

The first cut slices through her sleeve, drawing a welt down the length of her arm to her Mark. He slashes His wand again — left, right — and another, deeper laceration tears open the satin of her bodice, exposing her heaving breasts. Bellatrix inhales sharply as blood prickles to the surface of the wound. Again — _again_ — He strikes out with the wand, shredding the celestial black fabric of her wedding gown into starry ribbons at her feet to leave her bloodied and bared before Him, hardly able or daring to breathe.

He has seen her nude before, of course — has had her kneel before Him wearing only her devotion, her naked hunger for His touch; has stripped her to her very core and left her wanting — but never quite like this. 

The Dark Lord assesses her a moment — a cold, unsparing evaluation; dark eyes flitting swiftly up and down her body in a way that ignites sharp goosebumps on her skin — then moves closer, reaching out to trace the streaks burning red across pale flesh. Thrilling, throbbing, she leans into His touch — straining desperately against the spell that keeps her tethered naked to the wall, limbs splayed like a seraph, or a saint.

 _Your first vow was to me,_ He says — or does He?Bellatrix is too consumed by His cold fingers on her skin to know whether she's imagining His cold words in her head; He is on her and within her all at once; possessing and devouring. The ring on her left hand means nothing; the Mark on her left arm means everything — oh yes, she understands.

"Any Heir you may bear, any child that you birth," He tells her with the gentlest hint of venom, dragging His sharp wand across her womb, "belongs to me."

"Yes." She isn't sure if she says it aloud — isn't sure of anything at all anymore but the glistening wetness between her legs and the glittering stars behind her eyes.

"You, Bella..." His tongue flickers snake-like over the bleeding welts that mar her breasts, her Pure, Pure blood staining His lips: her heart in His teeth. "...belong to me."

"Yes!" she cries out, beseeching — and at last, at _last_  He is inside her, in every way, her infallible, immortal Lord and Master, tearing through her mind, her body, and her soul.

In an all-consuming, cataclysmic supernova, the constellations within her explode.

* * *

**MINISTRY OF MAGIC — 1981**

CLASSIFIED: Department of Magical Law Enforcement Interrogation Transcript

Prisoner #759 — Bellatrix Black Lestrange  
Interrogator — Bartemius Crouch Sr., Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement

_[Prisoner has undergone enhanced interrogation techniques; wounds and bruises clearly visible.]_

CROUCH: I can Heal all of that, you know. Or... we can continue.

_[Prisoner laughs.]_

PRISONER: You think a little pain will break me? _Me?_ You know nothing of pain.

_[Prisoner spits blood into Crouch's face. He wipes it off, refusing assistance from guards.]_

CROUCH: Then let us continue.

PRISONER: Oh, _let_ us.

CROUCH: We have talked enough of punishment... Let us speak now of rewards. You claim He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will _reward_ you for your faithfulness.

_[Crouch motions to a guard, who brings his wand down. Prisoner jolts back against the chair, fresh marks appearing on her skin.]_

CROUCH: Is that your reward? Is this?

_[Guard strikes again with his wand. Prisoner bares her teeth.]_

PRISONER: Oh, Crouch... The things the Dark Lord has taught me about torture would make your blood flare to fire in your veins and your tongue shrivel up in your throat — would make these little interrogations of yours seem like children's games —

CROUCH: I have no doubt that you would torture children for him. I have no doubt that you _have._

PRISONER: He is my Lord, and I am his most faithful servant. I would do anything he asked of me — anything and more —

CROUCH: Yes, that is precisely what your husband says.

_[Prisoner falls silent. Crouch reaches for his wand.]_

CROUCH: His own interrogations have proven quite... illuminating. Not nearly so skilled an Occlumens as you are, is he? Would you like to hear? What Mr. Lestrange has said?

PRISONER: Rodolphus says a great many things.

CROUCH: And so will you, Madam. So will you.

_[Chains tighten around Prisoner, restricting her movement, as Crouch gestures for guards to approach with vial of Veritaserum. Potion is forced down Prisoner's throat as Crouch speaks.]_

CROUCH: You think me cruel, perhaps, a sadist like yourself? No. Pain, in this case, has _purpose_. Your body is too preoccupied to fortify your mind — so I believe you'll now find your ability to resist the effects of Veritaserum significantly weakened. Isn't that so, Madam Lestrange?

PRISONER: Yes.

_[Crouch rises and circles Prisoner, pressing his fingers into a wound.]_

CROUCH: Are you hurt, are you humiliated, to find yourself so helpless, just like all your many victims?

PRISONER: Yes.

CROUCH: Good.

_[Crouch tears aside Prisoner's shift, ripping the garment. His hands trail down.]_

CROUCH: And the Dark Lord — did _he_ ever touch you like this?

_[A long silence — Prisoner appears to attempt to struggle against the potion and restraint.]_

CROUCH: Allow me to repeat the question. Did you submit to your vile master in this manner? Did you allow yourself to be fucked by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?

_[A bright flash — Crouch staggers backward, wincing. Prisoner smiles.]_

PRISONER: _Yes._

_[Crouch seizes his wand and slams Prisoner forward onto the table with a binding curse — she laughs.]_

PRISONER: All that effort, and _that_ is all you can think to ask, all you can think to do? You're a fool, Crouch — a pathetic, unimaginative fool. You want the truth? There is your truth. 

_[Crouch snaps his fingers. Guards move forward.]_

CROUCH: Oh, my dear, depraved Madam Lestrange... We're not finished with you yet.

* * *

**AZKABAN — 1995**

Dementors devour her mind with a certain admiring deference, but even they do not consume her as He did — even they cannot touch the edge of all that blackness swirling inside her, shattering and annihilating, swallowing her whole. The scabs on her body and scars on her psyche are cauterized by scorching fervor, but the Mark on her arm stays faded and cold.

Fourteen years, forlorn and forsaken. Fourteen years, alone in the dark. Fourteen years that Bella has writhed and waited, for the day that she finally, _finally_ — burns.

She could peel her skin off when it happens and she cannot go to Him, almost does, tearing at her forearm with enough ferocity for blood. Every day, it glows blacker and brighter, and every night, Bellatrix sits wide-eyed and awake, transfixed at the door of her cell, willing it to open, waiting.

But when it does — when it finally blasts open into a mass of metal and stone — it is not the Dark Lord standing in the rubble. It's Rodolphus, looking like a ghastly spectre from her most hallucinatory visions: atrophied and armed.

He holds out her wand — her _wand_ — and she takes it, fingers curving around familiar walnut wood with the sharp, stinging clarity of resurfaced muscle memory.

Bile in her throat — nearly choking on the words — Bellatrix speaks. "Where is He?"

Something acrid flickers ghost-like across his ravaged face, but it's gone in an instant, and Rodolphus gestures toward the corridor, up to where this innermost prison they've put her in leads toward the open world outside. "Waiting for you."

Every atom in her body is alive and throbbing with vindicated purpose, Pure blood rushing through her veins with the force of a flood. She walks through the prison passageways, past the already empty cells, and out into the cool dark night as if in a waking dream — hardly seeing the stars above her, hardly hearing Rodolphus behind her.

"He is... changed," he's murmuring, with low and emphatic urgency. "He's not as you remember."

She almost laughs at that, almost fills this wide, wide world with laughter, but then He is before her, and the air sweeps out of her lungs.

He has always been more than a man, but now there is no man left. The sculpted symmetry of His features has been transformed and distorted into preternatural aberration — fearsome and all the more striking. Dark hair exchanged for death-white skin; dark eyes ignited into annihilating crimson; sharp nose flattened into slits as narrow as those of the snake slithering down His skeletal shoulders to circle, writhing, at His feet.

The Heir of Slytherin, _reborn_ : alive and divine and radiating power.

"Master," she breathes out, gasping — grasping at the shadowed shroud of His robes, falling to her knees in supplication. He spares her a serpentine smile.

"Rise, Bella." Her resurrected Lord cups her tear-streaked face with long white fingers, smooth and cold and sharp as bone. His touch burns like a benediction — sends her heart blazing up in her chest. "Rise, as I am risen."

The snake hisses softly, circling her, now, as she stands. Bellatrix is too transfixed in His thrall to be conscious of the scene behind Him: Dementors gathering into formation — allies, no longer tormentors; freed Death Eaters shouting in celebration, shooting the Dark Mark up into that starry sky with a spell she has not heard in fourteen years. _Morsmordre._

The Dark Lord's bloody gaze does not leave her own. She feels Him penetrate her mind: probing through her memories, all that she endured for Him, as He traces the scorched, scratched Mark on her arm — calling up old scars. A flash of terrible anger — she shivers — and then He has released her, leaving her bereft once more.

 _My most faithful._ That familiar sibilant whisper comes coiling through her thoughts as a feverish chill sweeps her body. _Come to me tonight, and you will be honored beyond your dreams._

* * *

**MINISTRY OF MAGIC — 1981**

CLASSIFIED: Department of Magical Law Enforcement Interrogation Transcript

Prisoner #759 — Bellatrix Black Lestrange  
Interrogator — Bartemius Crouch Sr., Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement

_[Prisoner lies bleeding on the floor. Crouch stands over her.]_

CROUCH: Come now, surely three days with the guards must have been more pleasurable than one night with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Or think of it this way — it's certainly better than a life with the Dementors. But ah... that's where you're finally headed, isn't it?

_[Prisoner is apparently unable to speak.]_

CROUCH: What's this, Madam Lestrange? Broken so soon? I admit, I'm disappointed. He would be, too, I think, but then, we'll never know.

_[Crouch kneels down to seize Prisoner by the hair.]_

CROUCH: Did you think he would save you? Where is your Lord now?

PRISONER: _[inaudible]_

CROUCH: Begging at last? Speak up, my dear —

PRISONER: I'll kill you.

_[Crouch releases her and stands.]_

CROUCH: I very much doubt that, Madam Lestrange. You won't be killing anyone, ever again.

_[Crouch walks toward the door, then turns back.]_

CROUCH: You know — your husband had the most horrifying thought in his head. He thought you may have been pregnant, with the Dark Lord's accursed spawn. Isn't that appalling? Well. I suppose there's no chance of that now.

_[Prisoner screams, letting loose an explosion of wandless magic that sends Crouch stumbling back against the door. Guards move to restrain her once more. Calling back as he exits —]_

CROUCH: Clothe her and take her to Azkaban. May she rot there with my son.

* * *

**MALFOY MANOR — 1995**

Her face is gaunter, now — all those sharp Black angles made sharper and more angular, pale skin pulled taut over hollowed cheekbones. Meeting her own eyes in the mirror is startling. No longer bright storm cloud grey but dimmed and darker now, the color of slate after rain. Her once smooth, shining hair is dull and matted, and Narcissa's brush sends sharp tendrils of pain shooting up her scalp with every gentle stroke.

"I'm sorry," she says softly, seeing Bellatrix wince. And again, still softer — "I'm sorry." Bella knows she is apologizing for more than the brush, can hear the unsaid words beneath Cissy's quiet desperation: _I'm sorry I stayed in my beautiful white manor with my beautiful white gowns and my beautiful white peacocks and my beautiful white-haired son, while you were being ripped apart from the inside out. I'm sorry I never fought for you, I'm sorry I never came to you, in fourteen years. I'm sorry I lied for Lucius to spare him your fate, I'm sorry I loved him above all, love him still, while you —_

"You should be." Her voice sounds different, too — harsh and rasping. Too many jagged edges. Narcissa's is clear as a chime.

"Bella—" Cissy's hand is trembling, and the brush snags on a tangled clump of hair. She reaches out to disentangle it, and Bella reaches up, too, feels the hand in her hair — _dragging her up, throwing her down again_. She's unsheathed her wand and sent Narcissa flying back against the wall, collapsing onto the chaise lounge in a heap of silk and diamonds, before she realizes what she's done.

Breathing hard, Bellatrix stares at her sister, who stares back — wide crystal eyes filling quickly with tears. "Don't touch me," she hears herself snarl, and Narcissa's delicate features crumble.

"Bella, what did they do to you?"

Hysterical, bubbling laughter claws its way out of her throat and reverberates around the room, sounding like sharp knives on skin. For a single, savage moment, Bellatrix imagines stabbing her blade into Cissy's soft silken stomach, watching all that white turn red with blood. But then it passes — Salazar, it _passes_ — and she's moving toward the door, no longer laughing, only half-turning when Narcissa speaks so quietly she might not have spoken at all.

"You're going to him? Now?"

Bellatrix looks back at her constricted expression — alarmed, aghast, _afraid_ , trying so desperately to hide it — and waits for the familiar surge of affection, of sisterly sentiment and warmth. It does not come.

"Bella—the way he is now—" _Careful, Cissy,_ thinks Bellatrix, and Narcissa swallows. Whispers. "He isn't human."

How little Narcissa understands. How little she has ever understood.

"He never was," is all she says, and the door slams shut behind her.

The manor is still and quiet as Bellatrix wanders its empty, elegant hallways: a phantom, a wild-haired ghost. Malfoy family portraits line the walls, Lucius and Narcissa blinking out from every frame, with their Heir — Draco, another Black star — growing from infant to young man between them. Cissy had given birth the year before the Dark Lord fell — the year before Bella fell, too. She casts _Descendo_ behind her as she passes, and smiles with fierce satisfaction as they all go tumbling down.

The Dark Lord is in Lucius's study — _His_ study, now, she supposes. He is facing away from the door, toward the window, absorbed in a design suspended in the air before Him. It is a map, an illuminated blueprint, with a dozen luminous dots that move along with His fingers. They are labeled: there is _Lucius_ , and _Rodolphus_ , and herself — _Bella._

"A mission," He says quietly, without turning around — she has not said a word since she stepped in, but has not needed to. "Are you ready, Bella?"

This morning she woke up in Azkaban. Her body is ruined, and perhaps her mind as well. She is drawn in new, sharp edges. She has never felt more ready in her life.

 _Disrobe,_ comes the silent command, unspoken and unconditional, as He dissembles the map and turns. Bellatrix obeys, reaching up with shaking hands to unclasp the robe she is wearing — one of Cissy's, light and soft. It tumbles smoothly to the floor.

She stays very still as He approaches, tilting His head to the side as He studies her: slitted nostrils flared, slitted pupils narrowed, pale fingers flickering across pale scars. "Not ruined," He says at last. His voice is higher than she remembers — high and cold. "Remade."

Bella meets His eyes — His glorious, gleaming red eyes — and understands He is referring to His own body, too. Having remade himself, He is ready to remake the world.

 _With you at my side,_ He says soundlessly. _My warrior. My most loyal servant._

 _Yours,_ she answers fervently, lowering herself to her knees and kissing His robes. _Yours, yours, yours._

"Yes," He says aloud, red eyes flashing with another spark of that annihilating anger; crimson fury in every syllable: "They knew you were mine." He runs spidery fingers through her knotted hair, and she does not flinch — does not wince — does not feel the need to pull away. "Everything they have taken from you I will reward and restore in full," He hisses, and hisses again — Parseltongue. The snake comes slithering out from the desk and wraps itself around Bellatrix, tensing sinuously around her as the Dark Lord's grip tightens on her hair. "What has been done can be undone. What has been unmade can be made again."

The snake clenches itself around her waist, squeezing and constricting. She gasps, leaning forward, hands reaching out unthinkingly to grip the Dark Lord's robes — and He opens them. Guides her to Him. Touches her lips like a blessing.

Bella's eyes are aflame with tears. He has never allowed her to worship Him in this way before — has never honored her with this level of intimate consecration. She takes Him into her mouth with reverent awe; feels the snake stirring, slipping between her legs; ignores the charred embers inside of her flaring once more to life, building to an unquenchable inferno.

To love a Dark Lord is to spiral toward inevitable combustion, and Bellatrix has always been willing to burn.


End file.
